The Shame of a Nation (II): Outlaw Military Assault Weapons in the Hands of Civilians

By Brigitte L.
Nacos

The 20-year old
who killed 12 little girls and 8 little boys and six women within a few minutes
in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, carried a .223
Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle and two semiautomatic pistols, including a .10
mm Glock and a .9 mm Sig Sauer. These three weapons plus two hunting rifles
were owned by the shooter’s mother who, according to media reports, was a gun
enthusiast, a person fascinated with guns.

Her son used the
Buckmaster rifle, an assault weapon used by the military, in his horrific
attack. It is not known yet, how many bullets were shot. But according to Connecticut’s
chief medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver II, all victims were hit multiple
times. Moreover, as Dr. Carver revealed, the bullets the attacker used were designed
“in such a fashion the energy is deposited in the tissue so the bullet stays in”
and therefore resulting in deep damage.

In the renewed
gun-control debate, there are demands for background checks, longer waiting
times, stricter rules for gun show and online sales.

All of that
might help a bit.

But it hardly
would have kept the Connecticut mother from buying those weapons and her son
from using the most lethal one in his attack.

Therefore, the
law provision most urgently needed is the categorical ban of military-type
assault weapons in the hands of civilians.

Apart from the
military and SWAT teams, nobody has any reason to own killer-weapons that mow
down dozens and dozens of targets within minutes.

Later today, President
Obama will visit Newtown, the small New England community that experienced the
ultimate nightmare.

In
the face of unspeakable tragedy, a good president becomes the consoler-in-chief.

But that is not enough. He must now become the attack-dog-in-chief against the
National Rifle Association and its allies.

X

Unless there is
a categorical ban of automatic weapons, shootings in public places will be as
American as apple pie.

Consider this,
in the week of the Connecticut massacre

a gunman at an Oregon shopping mall killed two
people and wounded a third amid a holiday crowd estimated at 10,000 people;

an
18-year-old student in Oklahoma was arrested for allegedly plotting a
shooting and bombing attack at Bartlesville High School the same day the mass
shooting occurred in the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown;

one
day after the Connecticut massacre, a man was arrested after firing about 50 shots in the parking
lot of a Southern California
shopping mall, prompting a lockdown of stores crowded with holiday shoppers. In
this case, fortunately, no one was harmed.

Also on Saturday, a man in Cedar Lake, Indiana, who had 47 guns hidden in his home was arrested after he threatened to "kill as many people as he could" at an elementary school.

And then this latest incident--today: St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church in Newtown, Connecticut, was
evacuated during noon Mass, after a man had called the
church and said, “I’m coming to kill, I’m coming to kill.”